from country to town, part 2

Part 2.

During that  night, they kept me alive and they controlled my blood and then another day arrived.  I was not very well, but not like a very ill person. The bad moment was away. A new doctor came to see me and it was the cardiologist.   The same story again and again: “You know we are on holidays here at the hospital and the department of coronopathy exploration is closed. So the doctor told me he had found place at the Clinique du Tonkin, in Villeurbanne (near Lyon) and they were waiting for me.   The helicopter of SAMU would arrive at 11:00 a.m. since he couldn’t keep me there since I needed better exams.   I phoned my mother and she told me that they were ready to go home in Lyon and that they would be on the roads while I fly to Lyon.

I have a small secret I’ve never told anyone: I have never taken a plane … but I took a helicopter and it was wonderful! The SAMU’s doc asked me if I wanted to see the view and they put me in a good place, with my right arm with its tubes in my vein. And in my hospital suit! No more decorum but who can see me in this such fashion suit? Some clouds? The sky was blue without clouds. I was really happy to discover a new land. Yes from the sky, houses are small and I found that many houses have a swimming pool.

In about 2O minutes I was in Lyon where an ambulance brought me and my doctor and a nurse to the Clinique du Tonkin. 

This is where another story begins.   I met up with my future cardiologist and I was examined, where I was told that  I needed open heart surgery for 3 blocked coronaries.  Things all took speed so quickly and I remember my last evening and a song called Diamonds By The Yard (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2BwDZ0m4qg ), by one of my American friends, Elliott Murphy and then I went to sleep.  Don’t ask me how I went to the operating room, how I took a shower.  I can’t remember.  I just remember the night after and the great pain that I feel in my body.  Of course I can’t stand the morphine that they used to give me.  I wondered – “What about my diabetes?”.   I’m sure he was pleased to see me with a great complication of diabetes. Sure I will take care of it after that I thought to myself.   They operated on me without my NPH insulin, only Novorapid (Novolog) from time to.   I was under glucose serum!!!!!!!!!   And after 2 days I asked to become my OWN doctor for control of my, and the answer was “oui”.  It’s not easy to have great pain, no able to move  and use insulins ( Humalog and Novomix 30). And I must tell you: I didn’t like the hospital. I heard the others patients, the steps of the nurses in the corridors. And my surgeon was becoming a good friend. He came after his great, so great job, every evening and we started to talk… I discovered that he saw every shows of the Rolling Stones... we spoke about anything and everything. Not about my surgery, and it was good.

5 days later I moved to Iris, a place near Lyon, where patients with open-heart surgery go to learn how to put on clothes without the help of the arms, play with small balls like a child, try to walk 5 minutes and more every day … but it’s another story.